SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers for those who have not seen past episode three. Current BBC4 viewers have not seen beyond episode seven - please do not post spoilers for future episodes

My name is Ben and, finally, I can call myself a fan of The Killing. Until two weeks ago, friends and colleagues would go on (and on) about the fantastic darkness of this Scandinavian drama, the unique flavour of Nordic Noir and the jumpers of someone called Sarah – and they may as well have been speaking Danish for all I really understood what they were talking about.

But the exile is now over. The critically acclaimed, 20-part series is being repeated on BBC4 and I can, at last, join the conversation. I can see for myself why so many people loved the show to the extent that a colleague of my girlfriend's stayed up until dawn on four consecutive weeknights to get her fix of Forbrydelsen (the Danish title), despite having two young children and a demanding job.

Still, I have to steer clear of the internet. One of the things about watching a repeat is that you cannot afford to look anything up online or in cuts in case you come across a careless – and catastrophic – spoiler. The question of who killed Nanna Birk Larsen is an obsession I want to hold on to until I'm watching the credits for episode 20, thank you very much.

So, avoiding too many specifics for those only now watching on BBC4 – and particularly those finding the current broadcast pace of one a night too much so stacking up later episodes on the PVR – one of the most immediately striking aspects of this superb show must surely be the emphasis and attention that is given to the victim, 19-year-old Nanna – the unimaginable fear and terror she experienced during her last moments and the impact of her murder on her family.

There are plenty of unforgettable moments: exchanges, visual images and snatches of dialogue. But the scene in episode three (look away now if you haven't got that far) when Nanna's parents visit the great detective Sarah Lund in the police station, and a uniformed officer thoughtlessly leaves the door to the incident room open by accident, is a hard one to dislodge. And this points to one key reason why the series is so good.

The camera focuses on Pernille as she stares through the doorway to the picture of her dead daughter – close-ups of Nanna's dead, bloodshot eyes, an image of her trussed up in the back of the car where she was left to drown. It is an unbearable, astonishingly powerful moment played with precision, depth and breathtaking emotional honesty by Ann Eleonora Jørgensen. But it also makes you realise that so many detective dramas focus on the procedure and not the devastating impact of crime.

One tends, with most dramas, to be concerns with who did it and why. Here the victim is put – beautifully and powerfully – centre stage alongside a very convincing sense of the full impact of having a daughter cruelly and brutally taken away. It is unimaginable, perhaps too distressing at moments, but one does not forget the taste of it.

The creator, Søren Sveistrup, seems an able student of the best of US drama. The Town Hall subplots also feel reminiscent of the civic machinations that are woven into the Wire, and certain aspects echo David Lynch's surreal classic Twin Peaks (I was a nut in the early 90s). It cannot be an accident that the question Who Killed Nanna Birk Larsen? was central to the marketing of this show just as the question Who Killed Laura Palmer? was back in 1991. Both dramas, while very different in many key respects, are adept at conveying a sense of adolescent yearning and the pain of growing up.

The sun never seems to shine in The Killing, but that doesn't stop it being easy on the eye. I'm enjoying my tour of the cityscape and domestic interiors of near European neighbours. Copenhagen feels quite close to home but also oddly exotically different at the same time. I haven't watched the US version currently airing on Channel 4 and I can't imagine why I'd want to – this show belongs to Denmark.

Happily I am still less than halfway through the first series, with the promise of a second series later this year – hopefully with a another dose of the piercingly smart, honest and principled (so far, at least) Sarah Lund.

So let me know: have you also been catching The Killing (Forbrydelsen) for the first time this summer? What are you making of it? Does it live up to the hype? Your thoughts – but no spoilers (BBC4 viewers are up to episode seven, but some people may be watching on catchup) – please.